The differences in physiology play a part. Women are, on average, smaller and have shorter limbs. If you watch the women’s game you can see that they are much more dependent on using the rest, which inevitably forfeits some of the power and accuracy.
Any woman who spent some of her misspent youth playing pool in bars will tell you that having tits causes an issue too. There is a reason that the myth about Amazonian warriors cutting a tit off to better shoot with a bow and arrow pervades.
Imagine a male midget or a big fat wobbly man trying to play snooker. Women’s frustrations at the table are broadly the same, just on a less amusing scale.
I expect some of the boys club type atmosphere at practice halls does play a role but it’s not the main issue. Especially as the women who get good at snooker/darts etc were often introduced to it as children by their dads or other male family members.
Anywhere where the game is taken seriously, any serious player will be welcomed.
Once you’ve proved talent and/or commitment, no one will care much that you are a girl (although you will probably get your arse pinched/slapped/rated out of ten when you lean over the table. Get your sweet revenge by beating his arse, at the game, obvs).
Equestrian sport is the one arena where sex (of the humans at least) doesn’t seem to make any difference and thus isn’t segregated (it was once presumed it would matter in thoroughbred racing, but women jockeys have proven themselves over and over and a woman won this years grand National).
In ultra, ultra endurance events it’s possible that female fat stores/ slow twitch muscle fibres give women the edge but these are the kinds of sports that not many people compete in and very small numbers of those competitors are female, so consequently there are also small data sets.
www.bbc.com/news/world-49284389
Driving sports are an interesting area to think about. Women have driven in formula one but not for some decades, I suspect as the cars become more powerful, driving them has become more and more taxing on the body. We know that women are more likely to be significantly injured in ordinary traffic accidents so it’s not a great leap to think that women are more likely to be profoundly injured in racing crashes (although fatalities in F1 have fallen due to safety measures in car design) but more crucially, women are generally less able to withstand the g force pressure generated by high speed racing (especially on the neck):
Formula 1 racing is a sport that has been continuously evolving over the nearly seven decades since its inception.
www.planetf1.com
